Use Case: Reconcile Negative Disbursements with a Disbursement Summary Report

You can generate a Disbursement Summary report to manually reconcile negative disbursements like you would typical withdrawal disbursements. A negative disbursement is a debit from your entity’s bank account as the result of owed amounts not being covered by your account balance, typically the result of refunds or lost chargeback disputes. Regular reconciliation of negative disbursements is crucial to maintaining accurate financial records. This tutorial shows you how to generate a new Disbursement Summary report and use certain values to perform a manual reconciliation of the negative total.

Audience: Merchant

Note

• Reconciliation is the process of comparing your financial records, usually over a longer period, to ensure that the withdrawn amount matches the intended disbursement amount, used by merchants under Statement (Gross) Billing.

• Balancing is the process of maintaining financial equilibrium by verifying that your total daily disbursements align with your available balance and financial goals, used by merchants under Net Billing.

Reconcile with a Disbursement Summary Report

Complete all steps in the following sections to reconcile negative disbursement totals.

Note

Each user can have a different specific reconciliation process, some manually, and some through other accounting software. This guide covers the manual reconciliation process and the general flow to perform a reconciliation and might vary when importing into accounting software.

Prerequisites

Before attempting this tutorial, you must:

• Meet the general prerequisites described in Get Started with Use Case Tutorials.

• Have live data processed through the platform to be available for reporting.

Access the Reports Page

1. Click the PLUS icon next to Reports in the left navigation panel to open a dropdown menu.

2. Click Create Reports in the Reports dropdown menu to open the Reports page.

Configure your Disbursement Summary Report

1. From the Select Report dropdown, select Disbursement Summary Report.

2. Select Include all up-to-date data.

3. In the Report Date dropdown, select Today for daily reconciliation.

4. (Optional) In the Templates dropdown, select a previously saved report template or create a new one from the parameters being set by clicking Add Template.

5. (Optional) In the Filter By dropdown, you can optionally add a filter for Divisions, merchants, or include both.

6. Click Advanced Filters in the upper right to add the following data columns to the Disbursement Summary report that are recommended for manual reconciliation:

   • Refunds: Disbursement totals from a payment return or fee refund

   • Disputes: Disbursement totals from “won” or “lost” chargeback disputes

Tip

If you create filters for a report that you will regularly generate, be sure to save it as a template under the Templates dropdown available on the page to automatically recall your report filtering settings from the previously generated report.

Generate your Disbursement Summary Report

1. Click Generate Report to begin generating your Disbursement Summary Report.

2. Click the CSV or XLS download icon in the upper-right corner of the page to download the report to an Excel-readable format for manual reconciliation outside of the portal or to import it into your preferred accounting software.

Tip

The report is also available on the Report History page until the expiration date that is displayed on the page. You can use the data in a variety of ways to help improve your business or just for metrics tracking.

Reconcile your Negative Disbursement

1. Create a filter for the Total column to isolate any negative amounts in a spreadsheet viewer, such as Excel. (Total is less than $0.00.)

2. Use the corresponding Entity ID and Entity Name column information to confirm that the negative disbursement is associated with the correct entity.

3. Investigate each amount displayed in the shown Refunds and Disputes columns to better understand the reasons for each negative disbursement.

   Note

   Certain interchange fees that amount to less than a full cent ($0.01) will be displayed under Not Disbursed on a Disbursement Summary as an undisbursed amount rollover.

4. Add the totals of the Refunds and Disputes column values to calculate your “expected total” for the given negative disbursement.

5. Compare your “expected total” against the Total column to check for any discrepancies.  

   • No Discrepancies: If the disbursement totals have no discrepancies, you can finalize and complete your reconciliation process.

   • Disbursement Discrepancy: If you identify any discrepancies in the disbursement total comparison process, proceed to the next step.

6. Using the corresponding Date, Entity ID, and Entity Name column information, investigate and resolve any issues causing discrepancies including missed transactions or calculation errors.

   Important!

   Verify time periods shown under the Date column to ensure you are reconciling the correct entries.

Result: After resolving any discrepancies, you can finalize your negative disbursement totals and complete the reconciliation process to save for your records.

Note

If you identify any calculation errors from the platform, submit a Partner Services ticket for assistance in resolving the error.